1500 homes, towers up to 39 storeys: Plans for northern Sydney shopping centre site revealed

3 months ago 15

About 1500 apartments in blocks up to 39 storeys would be built around a new town square on Sydney’s northern beaches, under a proposed revamp of the Warringah Mall shopping centre site.

Retail giant Scentre Group, which owns and manages the Westfield complex, submitted a 20-year plan to develop eight mixed-use buildings alongside the 1960s shopping centre in Brookvale.

Northern Beaches Council earmarked the site as a future Brookvale town centre with hundreds of new apartments.

Northern Beaches Council in 2023 adopted plans to guide the development of a future Brookvale town centre, enabling at least 1350 units near the B-line bus stop on Pittwater Road.

The council, in a letter to the state’s planning authorities earlier this year, noted Brookvale was the “highest-priority strategic centre in the northern beaches for housing and employment growth”.

It said the amount of growth must be finely balanced with the capacity constraints of the area’s transport network, while being economically feasible and delivering community benefits.

Scentre Group has been working with the council on plans to overhaul the site, which sits in a mostly low-rise industrial and commercial area, after the Housing Delivery Authority declared the project as a “state significant” development earlier this year, sending it on a faster route to approval.

The eight mixed-use buildings would be built in stages over 20 years. Planning documents said the blocks would be visible from “key elevated locations in the west and north”.

The declaration means the application will be assessed with a concurrent rezoning to enable the taller residential buildings at the site. Scentre is preparing an environmental impact statement.

Under the proposed revamp, the six apartment blocks will range in height from 12 to 39 storeys, or 47 to 129 metres, and will mostly be clustered around the eastern and northern edges of the site. About 5 per cent of the new dwellings are proposed as affordable housing for lower-income earners.

The first stage of the proposal includes demolishing a medical centre and Bunnings Warehouse for two residential towers of 19 and 34 storeys, with about 350 apartments, on the site’s eastern side.

A scoping report, prepared for Scentre Group by consultants Urbis, said it had long been recognised that the mall, which opened in 1963 and is one of Sydney’s largest shopping centres, could better integrate with the Brookvale precinct and leverage its position alongside the busy B-line bus route.

Urbis’ report said the council’s desire to transform the site into Brookvale’s urban centre was “highly dependent on the ability of Scentre to execute”, and “the reality is that significantly more housing and associated development density is required to deliver the public benefit expectations”.

The council warned plans to boost the area’s population should not rely too heavily on the B-line bus service, which was already near capacity and subject to extensive queuing at peak times.

“Delays through Mosman and Neutral Bay, along with driver shortages, an ageing bus fleet and limitations on depot capacity limit the ability for this service to expand,” the council said.

The report said the plan signalled a “new urban typology in the form of residential towers along the frontage to Pittwater Road”, noting more detailed plans would include a visual impact assessment.

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